As Japan’s Supreme Court upholds a law requiring married couples to have the same surname, the glamorous spouse of Canada’s new prime minister is making Canadians revisit the idea of spousal surnames.

While Japan’s policy doesn’t specify which partner must give up his or her last name, 96 per cent of the time it’s the wife.

Akemi Ujitani, among a group of people gathered outside Tokyo’s Supreme Court building, broke into tears when the ruling was announced.

“This is about women’s human rights,” she said. “This is not right.”

In this Aug. 12, 2015 file photo, a couple dressed in Japanese traditional wedding Kimonos pose for a wedding photograph at Hibiya park in Tokyo. Japan’s Supreme Court has ruled that requiring married couples to have the same surname is constitutional, dealing a blow to a longtime effort for gender equality in choosing names.

AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File

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Quebec, for more than three decades, has taken the opposite approach.

The provincial government adopted a policy in 1981 preventing women from legally taking on their husband’s surname.

“The reason this law was adopted was to put an end to huge social pressure on women upon marrying to take the husband’s name,” said Marie-Hélène Dubé, a Montreal lawyer who specializes in family law.

“The goal was to promote equality of the spouses.”

READ MORE: Quebec one of the best places to be a woman in Canada, says study

‘Is it ridiculous to ask for freedom of choice?’

Madi Lussier, who’s in her mid 40s, was devastated to learn she wouldn’t be able to share her husband’s last name when the couple got married in 2007.

“I was quite shocked, actually. I cried.”

Lussier, born in communist Romania, grew up with the idea that “the west was the land of freedom, where people have the freedom of choice.”

Quebec’s policy hit her like a brick, she said.

“I felt someone was trying to control my life again.”

Being somewhat of a traditionalist, the very thought of having to check into a hotel with her spouse under two separate names makes her “uncomfortable,” she said in a whisper.

In 2007 she wrote an open letter to the government, which included a petition to give spouses the freedom of choice.

She contacted the province’s minister of justice; the human rights commission and then-premier Pauline Marois.

No luck.

Dubé admits Quebec’s law may have been applied “too rigorously” in the first 20 years. It can be difficult to strike the right balance between improving freedom and protecting it, she said.

“The reality is if the rule is too flexible, women can be subject to pressures … where they can be forced to do something that they don’t really want to do.”

Exceptions to the law are made only in extreme cases, such as having a name that invites ridicule, prejudice or psychological suffering.

A case can also be made if you’ve used your partner’s surname in an official capacity for five years or more.

The rule applies to Canadian women who move to Quebec after getting married in other provinces, as well.

“If you want to keep your maiden name, I totally and completely support it. But I should have the right to take my husband’s name as well,” Lussier said.